Fueling Strategy: Please partial fill today/tonight, Friday AM wholesale prices will drop 4 cents then look for another 4 cents Saturday AM – Be Safe!!

NYMEX Crude $ 41.75 DN $1.1800
NY Harbor ULSD $1.4066 DN $0.0411
NYMEX Gasoline $1.2731 DN $0.0563

NEWS
Oil prices settled at their lowest level since late August on Thursday, as the U.S. government reported a seventh consecutive weekly increase in crude supplies.

Analysts are mostly downbeat about the outlook for oil prices, given ongoing worries about a glut of crude supplies. December West Texas Intermediate crude dropped $1.18, or 2.8%, to settle at $41.75 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, for its lowest settlement since Aug. 26. December Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange gave up $1.75, or 3.8%, to $44.06 a barrel. The December contract for Brent crude expires Friday. “In a season where declines in [crude] inventory are more common, builds of any degree are negative,” said John Macaluso, vice president of institutional sales at Tyche Capital Advisors.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration on Thursday reported an increase of 4.2 million barrels in crude supplies for the week ended Nov. 6. That was less than the 6.3-million-barrel rise reported by the American Petroleum Institute on Tuesday but far more than the 1.1-million-barrel increase expected by analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal. Companies are required to report data to the EIA, while reporting to the API is voluntary. The build in Cushing, Okla., the trading hub for oil, of 2.2 million barrels is the “most telling of the data,” said Macaluso. “U.S production showed a slight increase while Canada has reached record amounts of imports to the U.S through 31 pipelines making up 45% of its output.” WTI prices had pared some losses in the immediate wake of supply data, after trading at the bottom of its range earlier Tuesday. Macaluso said it is “very feasible that we see a bounce from the bottom of the range. However, if oil settles beneath the $41.50 level, a [fall under $40 a barrel] is a mere arms reach away.”

The government report also showed that oil production in the lower 48 states rose by 8,000 barrels to 8.659 million barrels a day. “U.S. production continues to be a major underlying driver of the current market,” said Tyler Richey, co-editor of The 7:00’s Report. “As long as output in the lower 48 remains comfortably above the 4-week moving average, suggesting the trend in production is higher, the path of least resistance for oil prices remains lower.” Among the products, gasoline supplies fell by 2.1 million barrels, while distillate stockpiles rose 400,000 barrels last week, the EIA said.

Overall, oil prices may see a great deal of volatility ahead of the scheduled OPEC meeting next month and as representatives of OPEC member nations lay out their views. An increase in OPEC’s production quota could materialize as Indonesia is slated to rejoin the organization during the December meeting, said Virendra Chauhan, energy analyst at Energy Aspect.

In a monthly report released Thursday, OPEC said that its production, based on secondary sources, fell by 256,000 barrels a day in October to average 31.38 million barrels a day. That is still above the cartel’s output ceiling of 30 million barrels a day.